I love England, and I love being British.
Of course nowadays I can’t say something like that without needing to explain that I’m not a jingoistic nut.
I haven’t travelled that much, compared with a lot of folk I know. But nevertheless, I became most acutely aware of both of these facts -I love England, and I love being British – when I was abroad, whether I was in Canada, or the various parts of Europe to which I’ve had the pleasure and good fortune to go.
I love the places I visited, and, for the most (just as here at ‘home’) the people and their cultures, etc. Given that I’m writing this during Covid restrictions, I can’t wait to have the freedom to travel more widely again.
And to reiterate… my love of home, which became so much more apparent when I wasn’t there, was never even remotely jingoistic. It was and still is really just about simple familiarity, for the most part; recognising my rootedness in where I came from.
I mention this as a preface to saying how appalled I am by the current public face of Britain. Or Toryland, as I now frequently call it. Bojo, aided and abetted by his circus of appalling crony clowns, is convinced he’s the caped crusader of Capitalism. That’s not me indulging in satire, he’s actually said as much, in front of cameras!
Brexit, his terrible mishandling of Covid, and now this Yemen stuff. Friends were posting about this latter issue on FB when I drafted this. And indeed it’s the latter that prompted me to make this post. A Tory MP, talking in Parliament, has the brass to say Britain cares about the crisis unfolding there, having just approved a massive arms deal to Saudi, the aggressor, whilst simultaneously halving our aid to the Yemen!
By their works ye shall know them, eh? Not in Toryland. There it’s by their words ye shall give them the benefit of the doubt (tugs forelock). Tory confidence in their propaganda disinformation system is truly Goebbels-esque! They couldnt gove a sh*t that ‘the chattering classes’ might know what they’re up to. As long as the hoi polloi buy the the lines peddled in the Mail/Sun, etc, they’ll continue get away with murder. Literally.
Tory hypocrisy is so totally out of control. It beggars, or rather, I prefer to say it buggers, belief. (Remember all those peers creaming their loons over that word some years back?) It makes a mockery of the adage that actions speak louder than words. Apparently not if you have enough of the media working as your unofficial propaganda dept
And all this nakedly contemptuous piracy flows, like stinking pus, from the same septic poisonous ‘philosophy’. Unfettered Capitalist greed trumps (how horribly apt) every other value. It’s truly and deeply sickening.
And with enough of the UK population seemingly in the grip of media dominated by right wing tycoons, will the ‘decent ordinary folk’ of Britain ever wake up? Indeed, to what extent do they even exist any more?
Have they really been replaced by xenophobic brainwashed little Englanders? So dumb they’ll give away their own rights to piratical freebooters? The proverbial turkeys voting for Christmas. Willing to throw everything that was once good about the UK on to the pyre of deregulation that the right is relentlessly stoking? And all for the benefit a tiny super-rich clique?
The whole procurement thing that’s been going on around Covid, for example, with huge sums given to cronies with no due process, reveals this to be as far from ‘trickle down’ capitalism as you can get. It’s ‘tidal waves up’ capitalism, in which massive amounts of public money gushes from the many to the few.
And all of this at what cost? What further austerity and butchery of the Commons are we to look forward to, in the wake of nosediving off a cliff with Brexit, and completely fucking up our collective response to Covid?
Where will we wind up? These are crazy times, and the immediate prospect doesn’t look too good.
